


no matter what (it's always you.)

by donutcats



Category: Gossip Girl
Genre: F/M, Mentions of Eating Disorder, Mentions of Emotional Abuse, anti chuck bass, dan isn't gossip girl, mentions of an abortion
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-15
Updated: 2019-03-15
Packaged: 2019-11-18 08:53:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,163
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18117467
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/donutcats/pseuds/donutcats
Summary: Dan is sort of always there these days. Always exchanging text messages or buying her coffee when they meet up for lunch. It reminds her of when they were dating, of his words that day when they were trying to save Serena from herself yet again. She gave up something that made her genuinely happy, someone who was there every day. To wait. To never stop waiting.





	no matter what (it's always you.)

**Author's Note:**

> just a quick little au where I disregard most of the series finale. it's not a whole lot but I wrote it out pretty late at night and I'm afraid if I wait until morning to reread this I'll lose my inspiration. 
> 
> I always try to balance both my like and dislike for serena whenever I write about her, so I'm sorry if I sound a bit harsh in this, I tried to salvage it where I could.

“We can be friends.” Blair announces, with a lofty sniff. She’s prim and poised and tries her best to look down her nose at Dan, even if he is several inches taller than her. She extends the suggestion to him as if it’s a gift, which really it is. She’s offering him her friendship. Normally that goes for such a steep price.

“I mean, we were friends once. We can totally do it again.” He replies, face lighting up a bit at her words.

“Exactly. I mean, we started out friends. How hard can it be?”

And really, it feels good to be friends with Dan again. Even if things between them were weird for a while. He’s engaged to her best friend, and she might even admit to missing him. But only after he admits it first. So, it really only makes sense for them to rekindle their friendship.

They made such good friends.

-

Except, maybe it is a little hard.

At first, it’s awkward, a bit stilted. They don’t know where the line is anymore. They can never tell what constitutes as normal bickering and what overbalances into flirting territory. They’re constantly stopping themselves midsentence, clearing their throats and finishing with something terribly mundane.

Slowly things start to find a rhythm, a pattern. Something close to normal. It takes a while, as they hang out in groups, at fancy parties and events. Find each other in crowds like some sixth sense neither one of them mentions. Mingling together at the latest charity ball and having drinks at joint brunches. Like the type of friends they’re meant to be.

Somehow along the way, it turns into meeting up at museums and exhibitions, and they try to invite Serena, even though they both always know she'll decline because it's not her scene. Because she can't sit for hours watching black and white movies or walking in content silences among art installations.

It continues to evolve day by day by week by month. It feels like when they were younger, during that lapse of time they were just Waldorf and Humphrey, sharing coffees and indulging this new friendship of theirs.

Neither of them talk about how Blair never even attempts to invite Chuck along, like how Dan tries with Serena. Chuck’s never around enough for her to even try, and she tries not to dwell on that.

Except the more time she spends with Dan, the more they spend nights in the Met or at Film Forum, or the rare times it’s the three of them playing board games at their house, Blair starts to realize she’s a bit lonely.

Dan is sort of always there these days. Always exchanging text messages or buying her coffee when they meet up for lunch. It reminds her of when they were dating, of his words that day when they were trying to save Serena from herself yet again. She gave up something that made her genuinely happy, someone who was there every day. To wait. To never stop waiting.

Blair tries not to complain, especially to Dan of all people. She didn’t choose him. Why would he want to listen to her rant about how her husband once again called to tell her that his business meeting in Thailand will be extended for yet another week.

She realizes rather quickly that maybe deciding to try the whole amicable friendship thing with Dan wasn’t a great idea. As always he manages to pop the bubble Blair has spent years creating for herself, dumping her unceremoniously into reality. Without even realizing what he did.

-

Dan is the first person she tells about the divorce. The first person to know about the disillusionment of what she once thought of as her forever. She curls up on his couch, pulls a throw blanket over her legs, and waits for a lull in the movie before saying, as if it’s the height of polite conversation; “I think I want to leave Chuck.”

The movie is paused, no matter how many times Blair insists they should finish it out. Dan holds firm, refusing until she at least explains a little further than that bit of a bombshell statement tidily delivered in the wrappings of glib indifference. He wants to know the why’s and the when’s and the how’s.

“He’s Chuck Bass.” She supplies, answering every possible question that has been or will ever be. Using the same line he’s given countless times to excuse every bit of his behavior.

He cheats, he lies, he makes her feel as if she can’t do anything without his hand dragging her up and along. He’s Chuck Bass.

She doesn’t tell Serena first, because she doesn’t want Serena’s brand of melancholic reassurances. She doesn’t need the blind hopeless romanticism Serena has always been known for. For Serena trying to convince her that things will eventually work themselves out, that Blair just has to keep waiting and waiting because it’s always meant to be Blair and Chuck in the end. Because it’s always them at the end.

No matter how many times Chuck fucks up, no matter how deceitful or smarmy or underhanded he is, as long as he returns some measure of apologetic he can always find someone willing to dole out forgiveness. No matter how damaged he is, there will always be someone believing he can be fixed.

Because even though Blair herself is so very guilty of this, the least she can ask for is an outsider's perspective being able to see the things she was never willing to admit to. She was not created to fix Chuck Bass, to forgive him at every turn. He's an adult, and realizing these things feels like she can breathe for the first time in a long time.

That’s why she tells Dan. Why she waited for a moment like this, where her and Dan are hanging out alone because even as Serena pressed her lips together at the thought of them alone, she still begged out of their Classic Film Movie Night. She wanted his take on this first and foremost because no matter what has happened between them, she values his opinion above so many others. Because if Dan Humphrey looks her in the eye and tells her that she’s not crazy and it’s a good idea to leave, she’ll believe it.

So that's what she gets. He provides her with what she was looking for, his blunt words and his raised eyebrow, especially when she sits up straighter and feels the urge to defend the very man she now wants to break free from. It’s a terrible feeling, really, knowing the things he’s done to her, wanting that satisfaction that will come from handing over the divorce papers herself, but still feeling the consuming urge to rally in his defense when Dan only voices the things she herself has thought.

“Stop defending him.” His voice is firm, but with an overlaying warmth only he can do. “It’s a learned behavior, I know.” Dan says, in almost the exact moment she thinks something similar. She's heard about learned behaviors and survival tactics before. Things woman pick up without meaning to while being abused. In that moment she wonders if she classifies as one of those woman.

It’s something she’s taught herself to do over the years. A knee jerk muscle memory reaction. Excuse Chuck's actions, because if Chuck is in the wrong, what would that say about her? 

“You have to unlearn it, Blair. He doesn’t deserve your defense. He lost all rights to it a long time ago.”

She ends up crying into his sweater, the ugly, slightly itchy one she knows he picked up at some thrift shop, because she was with him when he dragged her into the door. Because she told him she hated it which made him want to buy it even more. Because the colors are atrocious and the fabric isn’t the best quality but he wears it every chance he gets because the sight of it sometimes manages to pull a smile out of her.

-

Dan is the first person she tells about the pregnancy.

It’s not as monumental of a moment as that night she curled close to him, and let him gently pick at every scab that had Chuck’s name on it.

The divorce papers have been served, but it’s still recent, and Chuck was always one to fight when he felt he had claim to something.

So she tells Dan the news by asking him to drive her to the clinic. She would have called a driver, but she doesn’t want this getting back to Chuck in any way shape or form.

She refuses for this to be just another thing he tries to use against her. When she has a child, she tells Dan, they’re going to come into this world created from nothing but love, and be born into nothing but love. She doesn’t want any child of hers being used in some unfounded custody battle revenge plot by Chuck Bass before it even has a name.

Dan doesn’t push or ask any more of her than what she tells him. And she’s thankful for that.

Blair remembers standing in his loft, she remembers a floral dress. Remembers Dan's soft hair and his soft face and his soft words. Her asking if it would matter if her baby was another man's child, and Dan, so earnest, _"It wouldn't to me."_

But it’s here and now. He’s with Serena now. They’re just friends now. _She’s over him, now._    
  
Or, is she? The thoughts comes to her, and just as quickly she grabs it and tucks it away. Now’s not the time or place to be deciding these things but it’s something she files away to dissect later.

“Whenever you have a kid Blair, and I know one day you will. You won’t ever have to worry about them being born into anything but love. You’re filled to the brim with it.”

His hand is on her knee and there’s a curl that’s broken away from the rest of his mop to brush against his eyebrow, and Blair wills herself not to tear up at his words.

-

“He’s writing about you again.” Serena says, so casually, in the way only Serena can manage.

Blair has perfected the art of devastating statements delivered in the exact casual tone to wreak the most amount of emotional havoc. She is a professional when it comes to polite indifference, barbed innocence.

But the way Serena can throw out complete sentences as if she has a complete and utter lack for where they land while still managing to infuse the words with a sense of tired contempt, is a natural talent.

“If you’re suggesting this is somehow my fault as your tone so helpfully implies, I’ll have to drive you Ostroff myself on the terms of mental illness.”

“Don’t be like that.”

“You were like that first, Serena. I was just returning the favor.” She continues to sip at her martini, affecting the air of someone who would rather be picking out a new charm at Tiffany’s than sitting and listening to these claims.

She knows he’s been writing about her, is the thing. Because he’s Dan and because he writes what he knows. She’s never asked him outright, but the times she catches him tapping away at his laptop or scribbling down in that journal of his, and tries to wheedle information out of him, he does nothing but smile. Asks her what she’d consider interesting synonyms for the word brown that don’t resemble food, and it’s the way his eyes spark in the light. Blair doesn’t need explicit confirmation to know. She’s not an idiot by far.

“I read one of his stories.” Serena continues, as if the small little spat didn’t happen. She twirls the stem of her glass between her fingers, watching the liquid swirl around. “I know he doesn’t like people reading what he’s written until he’s ready, but I was so _curious._ He seemed so proud of it, how could I not? So I read it and all I could see was you. I looked at some other files, and so many of his short stories all have the same thing in common. Girls and concepts inspired by you. He’s doing it again and I don’t know what I did this time.”

Blair wants to reach over, place a hand on Serena’s arm, assure her it was nothing she did. Because really it wasn’t. Because he’s just Dan and he has a tendency to write what he knows, and what he knows is the parts of Blair she never showed anyone else.

But she thinks about it for a second, in the span of time it takes her to finish the rest of her drink and set the glass down with a soft clink of finality.

It really isn’t her fault. If there’s one thing she learned after the ink on the divorce papers were dry, when she was back in her old penthouse that she always kept in her name, alone for the first time in a long time. She has to stop taking the blame for the people close to her.

All Blair has done is be in Dan’s life, and maybe she should reevaluate that. Think about how they can only ever be together or apart, no happy in betweens. Instead, Blair stands, smooths out her skirt, and pulls out enough money to tip the bartender.

“Maybe your fiancé only likes things when he can’t have them, Serena.”

It feels wrong even as she says it, but she stays firm, doesn’t take it back, walks out of the bar.

Dan Humphrey likes things that are a challenge. It’s something they have in common. How is it her fault that Serena has stopped challenging him?

-

She barely talks to Serena after that, their friendship hitting a standstill, the type of static wall that rivals all their radio silences in years past.

Blair sulks for a few days. Thinking and rethinking all of the things she should say to Serena, or should have said. Eats her weight in macaroons and only purges once. She thinks it’s a victory.

If anything, she mourns the loss of Dan more than Serena. After her exit from their brunch, not only has Serena gone dark, but so has Dan. They haven’t met up for any fun and cultured outings. Haven’t watched any old or new movies.

His texts are far and few between, mostly quick replies to the more benign things she sends him.

Which, is a bit understandable if she’s being honest. Dan and Serena are a unit, so of course Dan would distance himself after Serena has undoubtedly told him about the latest bitchy thing Blair has done.

It still stings.

-

It’s a week later when she’s walking down the curved staircase, the material of her robe fluttering almost dramatically around her ankles just the way she likes, when she stops short at the sight of Daniel Humphrey in her foyer.

“Oh, what a surprise. Are you done ignoring me now?”

It’s a bit presumptuous, her tone coming out snippy. She doesn’t know what else to say. That’s a lie, she has a million other things she wants to ask, but this feels the safest. It feels the most them.

The sight of him, slightly rumpled and looking up at her from the bottom of the stairs, moving to place his hand on the banister post, is achingly familiar.

“I wasn’t ignoring you. I was trying to do damage control.”

Blair suppresses a flinch, letting her nails dig into the wood of the banister for a split second before she forces herself to relax. She floats down the rest of the way, stopping a step above the end so she can look Dan in the eye. “How is Serena? I haven’t heard from her all week.”

He raises an eyebrow, the one which means he’s very unimpressed by her feigned tone. “She’s pretty pissed off. Distraught. Threw this at my head.” Dan holds up an engagement ring, the way his fingers twist it causes the light to catch and prism along the wall for a brief second.

“She called off the engagement?”

He shrugs then, stuffing the ring away and taking a step back so Blair can finish her decent. She doesn’t. She waits. She’s become very good at that.

“Tried being the operative word from before, it started as damage control and quickly devolved. She threatened to end it and then I _actually_ ended it, so she tried to toss the ring so hard at me I think she was hoping it would embed itself in my forehead.”

Blair tries not to smile. She really does. Her friend is _distraught_ , left by the very man standing in her home. She has no right to smile. But Dan shrugs, hangs his head. Pulls into himself just a bit like he knows how fucked up this is.

“Listen, Blair. I just need a place to stay for a little awhile. I won’t get in your way, I swear.”

With a little huff, Blair rolls her eyes. “We both know that’s a lie. You were designed to be in my way, Humphrey.” She finally steps down, and heads towards the kitchen, waving a dismissive hand through the air. “Come along then. The least you can do is make me something to eat after causing Serena to cry.”

He follows after her, heading straight for the fridge, and neither one of them mentions how Blair hasn’t tried to call Serena yet.

She will. She knows she will. Because no matter what her and Serena will always be family. But right now, she lets Serena be and revels in ordering Dan around the kitchen, flicking a wrist to and fro as he moves from cabinet to cabinet, smiling all the while.

-

“Was it about me?” She asks, one afternoon as they’re both sitting in the parlor, her reading a book and him on his laptop. Her feet are in his lap, and his free hand is currently loosely cupped around her ankle.

“Hm?”

“The subsequent break up of something so iconic as Dan and Serena. Was it about me?”

Dan almost freezes for a second, and then he’s shutting his laptop and placing it away. He turns to her, and when she moves to pull her feet back, to give him room, his hand latches on tighter.

“Some of it was because of you. I won’t lie and try to say it wasn’t, because we both know that when it comes to me there’s always going to be a very large chunk of my life that's about you. But there were other reasons too. Reasons we never really talked about or tried to work through. Things we swept under the rug and thought if we ignored it all enough then it’d go away and we’d be golden.”

She doesn’t know what she expected when she first asked him, but she doesn’t think this was it. And really she should have known better, because when it comes to Dan he always loved using his words.

“We grew out of each other, Blair. But we didn’t really want to see that for a long time.” Dan takes her hand then, a small gesture, nothing big or grand about it. But there’s still something that flips in her chest as he does, not even looking away from her face. As if it’s a casual, unconscious decision. “And then there was you, still wanting to be in our lives, in my life, even after everything. After everything we’ve said to each other and done to each other, we still somehow managed to settle into something so...” he trails off, pressing his lips together as he tries to find the right word.

“Normal. Familiar.”

He grins, his eyes crinkle around the corners just a bit and it’s so endearing. “Exactly.” The smile dims, but he doesn’t let go of her hand. “I don’t think Serena was ever comfortable with us being close. No matter how much she acted like it.”

They’re both quiet at that, because even if they could both see Serena’s discomfort from miles away, they never acknowledged it.

“She read one of your stories.” Blair finds herself saying, trying to find some footing in this conversation. She needs some bit of control, however she can find it, or else she’ll sit here listening to Dan talk about his problems all day just because he’s holding her hand. “They were all about me, and she wanted _me_ to explain. As if I could ever understand what goes on in that head of yours. I shudder just thinking about what's in there.”

The smile is back, amused and so fond and it makes that something in her chest flip again. “I know, she told me. I kind of understand why she did it, though.”

Blair is silent for a moment, replaying those short few moments of that brunch, before she left.

“I told her you only like things when you can’t have them.” It’s a near whisper, because she’s afraid of what Dan will say to that. They have a history of self sabotaging themselves, sometimes without really meaning it.

She squeezes his fingers, and to her surprise he squeezes them back. A little crease has formed between his eyebrows, and he lets out a sigh.

“Did you mean it?”

And doesn’t that say so much. That Dan Humphrey knows her well enough to question if Blair actually meant it, or if it was just Blair lashing out. She tries for a small smile. “No. You like a challenge. There’s a difference.”

“You’re right, there is.”

-

Somehow Blair manages to patch things up with Serena, and they’re not anywhere close to how they used to be. But it’s something. It’s slow going, clenched teeth and halfhearted apologies that give way to real apologies. It’s trying to figure out where they stand with each other now, picking their way across conversations until things feel less forced.

They’re talking again. And Serena has started calling her B again. Which, is progress.

Blair will never have a life without Serena in it. It’s a bit unfathomable if you think about it. B without S. S without B. It just doesn’t sound right. But Blair refuses to keep living in her shadow, refuses to let Serena dictate her life without much thought beyond what Serena needs. They aren’t in high school anymore. So she doesn’t go running whenever she hears Serena is in trouble yet again, and she doesn’t drop everything if Serena asks. It’s an adjustment, for both of them, but it was a long time coming, Blair thinks.

Chuck isn’t in her life anymore, and for once she’s so grateful for that. Before, she would have felt a little lost, adrift and not knowing what to do next without Chuck Bass by her side. But now he’s gone, jet setting off to the most recently trendy foreign islands, and she doesn’t care. She got the thing she most wanted from him; her freedom.

Another thing Serena had to adjust to, starting with fuming indignation which turned to grudging acceptance, was the fact that Dan sort of permanently moved into the Waldorf Penthouse.

It was yet another slow process, the act of Dan becoming more of a fixture in her life again. After that talk in the parlor, it’s as if every emotion Blair has ever felt for Dan but stamped away, was uncorked. The memory of his hands in hers and the way he’d smile whenever she kissed him. She wanted that again. Maybe she never stopped wanting it. Maybe she convinced herself she couldn’t have it for as long as there was ever any indication of Blair and Dan, singular unit.

They start touching each other more, a hand to the small of a back here, a head on a shoulder there. Dan gets as bold as to drop a kiss to her forehead as he heads out to work and it feels as if she was handed a plate of possibilities.

She loves him. She can say that with confidence now. She loves Dan. He said it to her once and she panicked, and it was the cause of their first real fissure. It was the most noticeable crack that spider webbed into so much more.

This time, she says it first. She doesn’t dwell or panic. Blair kisses him and tells him she loves him, both of them still in their pajamas, her all silk and him all cotton. She says it again before he can respond. And again. Each time punctuated by a kiss to his face. Until he’s laughing and pulling her closer and mumbling the words into her mouth.

It feels like everything she never thought she could have.


End file.
